Barbara Mistick

Barbara K. Mistick, D.M., President, NAICU. Barbara Mistick has led NAICU as president since September 2019. During her tenure, she has worked to ensure private, nonprofit colleges and universities were equitably treated while Congress distributed $77 billion in Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds. Coming out of the pandemic, she helped organize the higher education community and spearheaded efforts to double the Pell Grant maximum award to $13,000. The effort secured a down payment increase of $500 in the FY2023 federal budget, the largest increase in the Pell Grant maximum award since 2009. NAICU advocacy efforts also helped secure substantial increases in each of the core student and institutional aid programs in the 2023 omnibus spending package.Mistick also led the publication of NAICU’s first-ever national economic and community impact study, Private, Nonprofit Higher Education: Shaping Lives and Anchoring Communities. During the course of her 30-year career, Mistick has been an entrepreneur, educator and leader at institutions such as Wilson College (PA), the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, the H.J. Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University (PA), and the National Education Center for Women in Business at Seton Hill University (PA). She is a graduate of Carlow University (PA) and the University of Pittsburgh (PA), and earned a doctor of management from Case Western Reserve University (OH).